1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to systems and methods for communicating information. In particular, the present invention relates to systems and methods for tailoring information that is or will be provided or delivered to information recipients based on one or more characteristics of the one or more information recipients.
2. Description of Related Art
Human communication is the transmission of information by oral, written, electronic or other modalities, from one person to another that is received and understood. Information may include, but is not limited to, data, statistics, images, color, indicia, thoughts, and feelings. To be effective communication, the information must be accurate, clear, concise, coherent, and, most importantly, appropriate to the person receiving the information.
Whether information being communicated is effectively communicated is best judged by the information recipient. The person communicating the information may not be able to judge the effectiveness of his or her communication without stepping into the shoes of the information recipient. However, the communicator may be able to predict the effectiveness of his or her communication once characteristics of the information recipient are known. For example, the effectiveness of communicating a marketing message about a product may be enhanced by first assessing the characteristics of the message's known recipients, or the individual or collective characteristics of the intended audience as a whole, in order to develop, and then deliver, advertising information that the individual or audience, or at least a segment of the information recipients, will actually respond to.
The characteristics of an information recipient describe the information recipient's state of being. The characteristics most often used to describe an information recipient for purposes of assessing, and enhancing, the communication of information intended to be provided (or delivered, uploaded, downloaded, transferred, or otherwise made available) to the information recipient include known, perceived, or predicted geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioristic characteristics, each of which is described below.
Geographic Characteristics.
Because information recipients are often strongly influenced by societal factors that are unique to their locale, geographic location is a factor in assessing the effectiveness of content communicated to information recipients. For example, information recipients that live and work in rural areas may be more interested in and responsive to information, thoughts, feelings, and images related to rural issues. Similarly, information recipients that live in relatively cold or temperate regions may be interested and responsive to information, thoughts, feelings, and images related to products and activities that concern cold or warm weather activities. Geographic characteristics can be used to effectively segment a population into one or more target audiences.
Demographic Characteristics.
Because information recipients are influenced by criteria such as age, race, religion, gender, income level, family size, occupation, education level and marital status, among others, demographic information is another factor to consider in assessing the effectiveness of content communicated to information recipients. Demographic characteristics relate to the interests, needs and abilities of the information recipients, and, therefore, they can be crucial in establishing effective communication between individuals. For example, a 50-year old, professional, single male with a high annual income and a 30-year old married female with several children and with less financial means may have different interests in terms of vacation destinations.
Psychographic Characteristics.
The psychographic characteristics of information recipients strongly influence their individual and collective decision-making processes. Each information recipient is also greatly influenced by other's attitudes, beliefs and emotions. Thus, psychographic information is another factor in assessing the effectiveness of content communicated between individuals, and is useful in segmenting information recipients. Psychographic variables may include, but are not limited to, a personal desire for a different or greater amount of status, power, appearance, and money. For example, information recipients that have a strong desire for a different personal appearance may be more interested and responsive to information about clothing and clothing accessories than, say, an information recipient that is influenced by greed (although the two are not mutually exclusive). Similarly, information recipients that view themselves as being cutting edge or high tech may be interested and attuned to certain information that is less interesting to information recipients that consider themselves socially responsible (again, the two are not mutually exclusive). There are many psychographic characteristics, including, but not limited to, beliefs about consumer markets, lifestyle attitudes, fun-seeking desires, attitudes about family, trendiness, emotions concerning personal hobbies and activities, status seeking desires, sports enthusiasm, conservativeness, entertainment reactions, and beliefs about social responsibility.
Behavioristic Characteristics.
Behavioristic information may also be used to tune the content of a communication and segment information recipients because those characteristics strongly influence decision-making processes. For example, information recipients may be more receptive to information about particular brands that they are familiar with. They may also be more receptive to information about people, products, and services that they have been loyal to in the past. They may be receptive to information when the cost of the information is low. People also tend to act with a regular frequency or seasonally, and they are habitual and patternistic. Thus information delivered or provided in concert with those habits and patterns may be more effectively received.
As suggested above, segmentation is the process of breaking down a larger group of information recipients into smaller groups to assess specific geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioristic characteristics of the groups. Each group requires different strategies for effectively communicating information because each segment group, considered as a whole and separate from a larger group, has different or unique characteristics. Traditionally, different groups of information recipients were analyzed, and then a script, an advertising impression, a message, or some other information was developed that contained information targeted just for that group, and then provided or delivered to that group using one of several communication modalities. Unfortunately, that analysis process has always been a static one in which a snapshot of the characteristics of the group is prepared and used repeatedly for one time, or for many times in the future, even after the characteristics of the group have changed. Because the characteristics of a group inevitably change over time, the snapshot view of the group can quickly become less valuable to those seeking a response to the information they have communicated.
Below are some solutions others have developed to effectively communicate information to one or more information recipients.
In connection with advertising over broadcast television, several companies have developed systems that enable cable and satellite television operators to deliver targeted information (principally commercial advertisements) to their viewers. The systems employs passive and permissive viewer profiling that captures the demographic, psychographic and behavioral data of viewer's “on-demand” television entertainment requests. The resulting individualized viewer profiles enable the owner and operators of cable and satellite television system to deliver targeted television commercials that address the specific interests and brand preferences of a particular viewer, which is believed to maximize the return on investment for advertisers. A passive system like that one, however, does not require the television viewer to do anything, other than watch television.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,971,973 discloses a system for providing customized content to a consumer on a network-enabled exercise device. The system and method involve providing an exercise device having a display console, receiving user profile information associated with a consumer operating the exercise device, receiving content information identifying available content for display on the display console (the content information including selection criteria for selecting content to be displayed from the available content), selecting content for display to the consumer based on the content information and the user profile information, and presenting an impression of the selected content to the consumer on the display console. The user profile information includes (1) demographic information such as age, gender, weight, height, income level, education level and geographic location; (2) psychographic information about the consumer identifying the consumer's personal interests; (3) historical information relating to the consumer's operation of one or more network-enabled exercise devices; and (4) current information relating to the consumer's present operation of a network-enabled exercise device. The disclosed communication system is, unlike the one previously described, an active system that employs user-provided criteria to determine what kind of targeted information is delivered or provided to the user. The system, however, is limited to providing targeted information to an individual only, which requires a large number of scripts to be generated so that the information may be targeted to the individual who may in fact have very esoteric or specialized interests.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,978,470 is directed to systems and methods for inserting viewer-specific advertising content into regular television broadcast programming. The process involves a viewer device such as, for example, a set top box located at a home or viewer location, which gathers data identifying the characteristics of a viewer such as, for example, the viewer's age, gender, marital status, geographic location, and viewing habits. The viewer characteristic data are used to identify advertising content corresponding to the characteristics of the viewer. The viewer device includes a broadcast receiver for receiving broadcast content transmitted by a broadcast content provider over a broadcast network. The viewer device further comprises a broadband connection device for receiving advertising content transmitted by an advertising content server over a broadband network. Upon receiving the advertising content, the viewer device selects advertisements matching the viewer's characteristics and inserts the selected advertisements into the broadcast programming. Thereafter, the viewer device transmits the broadcast content and inserted advertising content to a television for viewing at the home or viewer location. That system, like the exercise device described above, employs user-provided characteristics, but it only uses characteristics of a single user. Also, like the exercise device, a large number of scripts must be generated in order to provide enough targeted information for various individuals possessing specific characteristics. Another drawback to that system is that it only provides targeted information to one viewer, even if a group of people are gathered around the television.
The above solutions are focused on delivering or providing customized information to individuals based on the individual's geographic, demographic, psychographic and behavioristic characteristics. Those solutions are not feasible where a single mode of communication is used to deliver or provide information to more than one information recipient, such as a broadcast television signal shown to a group of information recipients, because the group will likely have, collectively, a defining set of characteristics that are different than the set of characteristics defining any one of the individuals in the group. Moreover, those solutions are not feasible where the mode of communication is moving relative to the information recipients, or where the segment of information recipients is dynamic, such as in a busy public location.
The deficiencies of the above inventions are partly addressed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,922,672, which discloses a system and method for providing target groups of customers with a plurality of promotions for a plurality of goods. Active customers are tracked for each target group. Active customers can include customers with portable devices, customers with hand-held devices, customers who are viewers of a pay-per-view system, and customers who are viewers of a web site. The promotions for each target group are calculated based on the promotional objectives for each target group and the conditions in the operating environment. Selected promotions are sent to the active customers for each target group. The system tracks active customers by monitoring the changes of active customers on a real-time basis in a geographical area in which customers are to receive promotions (i.e., by using geographic characteristics), and updates the changes of active customers on a real-time basis. It calculates target group characteristics on a real-time basis and disseminates promotional information (e.g., sales of products) to the target groups based on changes in the operating environment. A database is used to store customer profile and customer buying history information. The promotional objectives take into account the time of day, seasonal factors, and the acceptance rate of the target group. Tracking of the active customers is accomplished through the use of an electronic signaling device, such as a pager operating in a radio-frequency-based local area network, or through the use of a cookie mechanism to identify active sessions of a web site.
That system, and the ones previously described, does not automatically evaluate the characteristics of a segment of information recipients in real-time (or near real-time) in order to automatically tune the content of the information that is communicated. U.S. Pat. No. 6,873,710 identifies that problem, explaining that the demographics of an audience in public places cannot be accurately predicted in advance; thus, any presented content must generally appeal to the population at large that passes by a communications device.
To solve that problem, at least in part, the U.S. Pat. No. 6,873,710 discloses a method and apparatus for tuning the content of information presented to an audience, for example, on a large display screen or an information kiosk, based on an automatic evaluation of the demographic characteristics of the audience. The disclosed content selection and driving system (i) extracts relevant characteristics about the audience, (ii) analyzes the characteristics, (iii) modifies the presented content based on the analysis, and (iv) records relevant statistics for reporting. The invention works as follows: an audio/visual analyzer (i.e., a camera and face recognition software) derives audience characteristics and other information about the public reaction to the presented advertising or information by analyzing audio or video information, or both. The derived characteristics (i.e., men, women, older, younger, tall, short, the number of people, how long the average person watches, etc.) are utilized to tune the content of the advertising or information content delivered to the current audience. A reporting module receives real-time audience statistics and an indication of the selected content. Reports can be generated for the content provider, such as advertisers, that indicate the exposure of various population segments to the presented content and the reaction of the audience to the presented content. U.S. Publication US 2009/0192874 discloses a system similar to that described above.
The U.S. Pat. No. 6,873,710 describes a passive system for obtaining characteristics of a target audience, which has obvious limitations, not to mention the technical limitations associated with face recognition software and the use of cameras for passively collecting demographic and other characteristics. Moreover, the U.S. Pat. No. 6,873,710 does not address the problem in the prior art of predicting the characteristics of a segment of information recipients that may be proximate a communications device.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,484,148, on the other hand, discloses a system and method for displaying advertisements that are specifically targeted to one or more individuals within the device's advertising range based on information relating to one or more of those individuals. That targeted content is achieved by providing a device with the means for receiving and identifying the individuals prior to displaying or during the display of selected targeted advertisements. According to one preferred embodiment of the disclosed invention, signals from one or more proximate individuals are received by the system and a consumer profile or the like is identified based on the signal. Such identifying signals may include the signature signals emitted by cellular telephones or the signature signals emitted by devices such as automobile transponders which allow motorists to pass through highway tolls without stopping to pay the toll collector, e.g., automatic toll charging systems. Once the advertising device receives the identifying signal(s) and identifies the one or more individuals, the device retrieves information from a consumer profile database which includes information regarding the individuals, and that information is then used to select and display targeted advertising to the individuals.
There are a wide variety of modalities for communicating information to information recipients, as the above examples illustrate. Modalities include using body language, computer and television displays (such as client computers and kiosks), physically handing out materials, providing or delivering static impressions and displays (such as electronic billboards), and radiowave and microwave receivers (such as radios and satellite radios), to name a few. One major drawback of communications systems designed to provide or deliver a large number of impressions to a large and relatively undifferentiated audience is that the money invested in sending those impressions is ineffectively spent on messages that reach the wrong audiences under the wrong circumstances. For example, the proportion of a national television audience that is thought to be genuinely interested in a national advertisement campaign (or believed by the advertiser to be a prime candidate to purchase their product), normally ranges from about 20 to 40 percent, according to some reports. A larger dissemination of impressions is suitable only for a limited type of information categories that are truly national in scope and relatively impervious to regional and seasonal variation or other characteristics. But that money investment is small, however, compared to the cost of multiple regional information dissemination campaigns to address various segment characteristics, such as geography. Thus, any system that can automatically adjust the information being provided or delivered to one or more information recipients based on both user-provided and passively collected characteristics about individuals who are proximate or may become proximate a communications device would reduce the cost of providing or delivering targeted information to segments of information recipients.
Although calculated or predicted geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioristic characteristics may be used to effectively tailor the content of information being communicated to information recipients, and using inferred or derived physiological data about information recipients may also be useful in predicting how a segment of information recipients may react to information being communicated to them, those calculated, predicted, inferred or derived characteristics are not effective in gauging, in real- or near real-time, how information recipients, or a targeted segment thereof, are actually psychologically or physiologically reacting to the information being received. Actual biological response information is necessary to assess whether it makes sense to make further adjustments to the content of the information being communicated to information recipients such that the effectiveness of the communication is maximized.
This is exemplified by the systems and methods previously described, which lack direct information about an individual's biological reaction to information being communicated to them. That is, the techniques described above rely on remote sensing and inferential determinations of an information recipient's individual reaction to information being communicated to them to infer or derive the effectiveness of the content of the information. For example, the U.S. Pat. No. 6,873,710 uses a camera to identify specific behavior that is used to infer whether or not an audience is paying attention to the presented content, and whether, through the detection of smiling, they are reacting to the communicated information in a positive way. Using a video camera and audio capture device, the U.S. Pat. No. 6,873,710 assesses whether an individual is facing the communications display, changing body poses to face the display, changing body expressions (visual, tracking of body features), changing facial expression as the message is displayed (visual), suddenly becoming silent (audio level down), or starting to laugh/concentrate because of the content (audio change). U.S. Pat. No. 7,106,204 teaches using body language detectors for indirectly assessing a psychological state of individuals in order to tailor the content of information being provided to those individuals. Inferring or deriving a reaction by a recipient to information being communicated to them may be misleading, or outright inaccurate, in that the disclosed prior art inventions have no way of differentiating other sources of communication (or non-communicative stimuli) that may be attributing to an information recipient's state of being.
Direct measurements of physiological effects on information recipients are well known in the art. For example, pupils respond to visual stimuli and drug loads that affect central nervous system function, and may be monitored directly to assess important information about an information recipient's current biological state, as well as changes to that state. U.S. Application 2006/0252976 describes implantable devices for directly monitoring physiological changes in an organism. U.S. Application 2008/0140159 discloses use of implantable devices capable of sensing and recording various biological signals from the body, such as, for example, electrocardiogram (ECG) signals, where the internal implantable devices offer advantages over external sensing devices that have at least one electrode attached externally to the patient. The application states that internal implantable devices can provide a high degree of measurement sensitivity as they decrease the distance between the source of the signals and the sensing device. These highly sensitive measurements are recordable in the electronic components of the implantable device. Moreover, the FDA recently approved the use of implantable RFID tags in animals, which, when used in humans, can be used to transmit information about a tagged individual to a nearby RFID reader (interrogator).
Monitoring an organism, or a portion thereof, may provide key data about how the organism is reacting to external stimuli that are sensed by sense organs (i.e., organs for detecting sight, sounds, smells, etc.). An information recipient's blood pressure and the concentrations of certain blood chemicals or blood chemical indicators may be detected using implantable sensors that provide important data about the information recipient's state of being, and changes to that state. Prior art patents and patent applications disclose methods involving biometric sensors for detecting a physiological state or change of physiological state of a being and then, using the information, adjusting the presentation of information to the being. For example, U.S. Publication 20070066403 teaches an e-book device that branches a storyline transparently depending upon user biofeedback. For example, as the possibility of a murder increases in the storyline, the user's pulse may increase so quickly that the process determines that more descriptive lead-up information is warranted to allow for a steadier user state. However, those disclosures do not involve combining characteristics information about a plurality of individuals for purposes of targeting a communication to the individuals.
It should be apparent, therefore, that there exists a need for a system and method for actively, dynamically, and seamlessly updating and tailoring information that is being or will be communicated to information recipients who are directly or at least proximate a communications modality using predictive-type characteristics about the recipients such as geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioristic characteristics, and inferred, derived, and direct physiological characteristics, which are continuously or nearly continuously being monitored and evaluated.